


Rip Me Apart

by xreyskywalkersolo



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 11:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6049957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xreyskywalkersolo/pseuds/xreyskywalkersolo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"General Leia Organa is in the middle of giving orders to her ground forces on Naboo when it hits. She cuts off midsentence as something punches her directly in the solar plexus, something more powerful and far more painful than any physical blow could ever be." In which Rey makes a choice and she and Leia both have to live with the consequences. Rated for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rip Me Apart

General Leia Organa is in the middle of giving orders to her ground forces on Naboo when it hits. She cuts off midsentence as something punches her directly in the solar plexus, something more powerful and far more painful than any physical blow could ever be. Inside her chest, there is a ripping, tearing, crushing sensation along with the same feeling she’d had when Han died, of falling from a great height and vanishing into darkness. 

Yet another of her family is dead.

_Rey._  

Leia’s legs give out, and she half-falls, half kneels on the ground, one hand instinctively going to her chest. Her breath comes in ragged gasps, sounding unnaturally loud; the world has gone silent, and all she can hear is her own pulse pounding in her ears and her own desperate attempts to breathe.

_Rey!!_

She fights it, fights the pull of the Force, but it drags her anyways, takes her far from the control room and deposits her on the new Starkiller base. As if she is watching through a camera, her perspective zooms inside the nearest structure, racing along winding corridors and down stairs until she finds herself at the base of a massive throne where Snoke sits, his massive, scarred head thrown back in malevolent laughter. There are two figures nearby, one standing and one lying on the ground, clearly dead. Leia tries not to look, but the Force is merciless, and it takes her closer and closer until—

She stops breathing. The figure on the floor has no weapon, but the one standing is holding a bright blue lightsaber. And there are tears gleaming on their face.

Rey is alive, and Ben is dead.

As soon as Leia reaches that conclusion, a great jolt goes through her, and suddenly she is back in the control room. Everything still sounds quiet, though, and it takes her a moment to realize that everything has stopped. All eyes are on her. Leia is no stranger to these episodes; Han’s death was not the first time it happened, but usually her episodes have been brief, perhaps a few seconds. She knows her staff and personnel are well-trained and more than capable of carrying on without her, so for this kind of reaction, she must have been out for at least a few minutes.

Slowly, Leia climbs to her feet. Her body feels stiff and heavy, grief weighing her down in a way her old age never has. “Admiral Akbar,” she says quietly, “your report.” She cannot show any more weakness, cannot afford to be focused on anything but the here and now. Ben is dead, but thousands more will die if they do not succeed today, and Leia will not let that happen as long as she draws breath.

Rey is alive. That’s all that matters for now. At least, that’s what she tells herself.

* * *

 

 As soon as the gangplank of the Falcon is down, Rey races across it and takes off into the forest. She hears Chewbacca roar behind her, hears Luke and Finn call her name, but she just keeps running, the lightsaber hilt banging against her hip. She’d begged them not to take her back to the base, make her face Leia with the knowledge of what she’d done, but all of them—Chewbacca, Finn, even Luke—had told her that it wasn’t her fault, that Ben (she refuses to call him Kylo Ren; he is—oh god, _was_ —her cousin) was beyond saving. But she knew otherwise. From the very first time he had tried to invade her mind, Rey saw the conflict within him, the part of him that was still Ben warring with the part he’d inherited from his grandfather Darth Vader— _their_ grandfather, she realized with a jolt. Rey had sworn to herself she’d bring Ben back, for Leia and for Luke, but then Snoke forced them to fight each other and he’d been about to slash her head from her shoulders, and she’d just……reacted. Rey had ducked—her smaller height an advantage, for once—before lunging up and sheathing her blade in her cousin’s chest.

Just like he’d done to his father.

Rey falls to her knees, fighting the urge to be sick as the world swims around her. She clenches her eyes shut as she sucks in desperate, frantic breaths, her lungs seeming constricted. Behind her eyelids, Rey sees Ben fall, hears the strangled gasp he made as she stabbed him. And, even worse than all of that, she hears Snoke’s laughter as he congratulates her, telling her that she’s advancing on the path to the Dark Side….

Rey slams her fists into the ground. “NO!!!” she screams, trying to block him out. “NO!!! NO, NO, NO!!!” Savagely she beats the forest floor until her hands are bruised and bleeding, her knuckles nearly broken. But no matter how hard Rey hits, Snoke’s voice doesn’t leave her alone.  
  
“Rey—Rey! REY!!!” Someone’s hands grab hers, and she instinctively lashes out with the Force, sending them sprawling. There’s a high-pitched whistle and beep that takes her a moment to place, but when she does, it snaps her out of her trance: BB-8 is next to her, clicking softly and peering up at her. Finn, meanwhile, is groaning and rubbing his ass as he sits up. “Hell, Rey, I think you broke something.”  
  
“Finn,” she gasps, eyes going wide in horror. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, I—I didn’t—are you—?”

“I’m all right.” He looks like he wants to say more, but he doesn’t, instead shifting closer to her. “Uh, your hands….”  
  
Rey flexes the battered appendages and winces at the pain. “Nothing’s broken. I think.”

Finn takes a breath. “Rey—”

“Don’t,” she snaps, and to her utter horror, her voice is shaking. “Just don’t. Please.”

“Rey, I’ve killed before. And I know……” He swallows hard. “I know what it feels like. But this wasn’t your choice. Kylo—”  
  
“Ben. His name was Ben.” Rey is struggling with everything she has to keep ahold of her already dangerously fragile composure. Finn clearly wants to argue but doesn’t, for which she’s devoutly thankful.  
  
“ _Ben_ ,” he says slowly, “was going to kill you. Snoke ordered both of you to fight to the death; if you hadn’t saved yourself, he would have—he’d have killed you, Rey.” Finn’s voice shakes. “And I couldn’t live with losing my best friend.”

“He was my cousin, Finn,” she whispers. “He’s Leia’s son—he was…..” She trails off. He was family, by blood, although Rey knows deep down that she could never consider him as such. Not after everything he did. “My responsibility. I wanted to bring him back for—for Leia…” She swipes at her eyes with her fingers. “I wanted to do something good for her.”  
  
“You already have, Rey.” Finn slowly holds out his arms, and she curls into them. Rey is still sort of getting used to this whole hugging business, but Finn gives really good hugs and he never minds if she gets overwhelmed and has to pull away. Rey tucks her face against Finn’s shoulder and cries, but even as she shakes with despair and self-hatred, she doesn’t miss the way he murmurs in her ear, “You already did something good for Leia. You gave her you.” 

Despondently she wonders if Leia will still feel that way once she learns that Rey killed her son.

* * *

 

The next few weeks pass in a sort of stalemate. Rey doesn’t exactly go out of her way to avoid Leia, but she doesn’t seek her out, either. Leia never speaks to Rey unless needed, but when she does, she’s very cool and professional. The worst thing is, Rey didn’t even have to tell Leia what happened. After Finn finally coaxed her out of the forest, she went looking for the general to confess, but when Rey got within fifty feet of Leia’s office she’d stopped dead. Through the Force, she could feel grief and anger emanating from the office in waves, mixed with a curious sense of relief and something else that could only be called guilt. Rey’s heart had crawled into her throat, and she’d bolted back the way she came, tears blurring her vision. There was no question that Leia knew, and (too late) Rey remembered what Leia had said about her Force abilities and how they’d activated when Han died. It didn’t take a huge leap of logic to conclude that Leia felt Ben die and might have even seen it too. The thought made her feel like she was going to vomit.

 Rey can count on one hand the number of times they’ve spoken since then. It’s one of the few things she remembers with any sort of clarity; the days pass in a hazy blur, and she doesn’t sleep very well anymore. She can tell Luke is worried about her, but whenever he asks how she is or tries to talk about it, she just gets up and leaves. Finn and Poe both tried the same thing and got Force-punches to the chest for their trouble. They mostly leave her alone now, particularly since she spends most of her days away from the base, training in the forest and only coming back after dark.

 This reminds her of those first days on Jakku when Rey couldn’t stop crying and it felt like her chest was splintering apart. All she wanted was her family.

 And now she’s lost it. Again. 

* * *

 “NO!!!”  
  
Rey bolts upright, her heart thundering in her chest as cold sweat sticks her clothes to her skin. She doesn’t even remember falling asleep, but she must have, and just as it always does, Ben’s death plays out in her dreams. The silence of the room seems oppressive, the shadows too deep, and Rey doesn’t even grab her lightsaber as she vaults out of bed and hits the ground running. Her heart thunders in her ears, blind terror snatching the breath from her lungs and pushing her to move faster, faster, to escape the nameless hulking thing she can never outrun.

She doesn’t remember the corridors being so long and winding, but finally the young Jedi bursts through the doors of the base and out into the cool night. Rey takes deep, grateful lungfuls of fresh air, but the fear doesn’t abate and so her legs keep moving and she runs, runs, runs until she collapses and sprawls into the dirt. And then Rey just lies there, curled on the ground, trembling and gasping for breath and making sounds that would be called sobs if she were able to breathe without iron bands constricting her lungs.

She isn’t sure how much time has passed—it could be a second or a year—when something shifts the tiniest bit, just subtle enough that Rey almost doesn’t notice. But notice she does, and time seems to stop as she lifts her head and sees Leia Organa staring down at her.

* * *

“Rey?”

  
Leia can’t really say that she’s surprised to see the young Jedi. As soon as she’d stepped outside, she’d been able to feel waves of grief, terror and self-hatred emanating from the forest. The emotions mingle with and magnify her own; right now, she’s far too unstable to block them out. It would have been far easier to simply go back inside, but she knows she’s been avoiding Rey for far too long, and it’s only causing the both of them pain. One way or another, this has to stop.

 Leia lost one child (twice); she will not lose another, for Rey is her child, even if the girl did not come from her womb. She hopes to whatever may be listening that Rey knows that, but then, if Rey has never had any family, how could she?  
  
Leia’s chest is so, so tight, her heart feeling like lead. Rey is lying on the ground, looking at Leia with grief-stricken, haunted, tear-filled eyes. “Leia,” she whispers, her voice cracked and shaking. The older woman almost loses her already fragile composure at the sound of it, so vulnerable and afraid. 

“Rey—”

 “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. Ben—he was—he was—” Rey curls in on herself, covering her face. “Snoke made us fight—he wanted one of us dead—I didn’t want to hurt Ben, I swear, I just……I just……he was fighting to kill me and I—” She sobs convulsively. “I know you hate me, but I never wanted this!”  
  
Leia didn’t think she could be in any more pain than she already is. Old wounds that never truly healed are layered over with fresh ones, Ben’s death the freshest of all, but as Rey utters those words, her already-broken heart shatters into tiny fragments. Never mind her old bones, and knee injury be damned (old wound that never healed right; Leia would much rather handle physical pain than emotional, but in this moment it’s just a bit too overwhelming), the general falls to her knees and scoops Rey into her arms, holding the girl so tight it’s a wonder nothing breaks. Rey struggles at first, but Leia is strong and doesn’t let go because she knows Rey fights not out of discomfort but guilt and self-hatred, and if there is one thing General Leia Organa will not stand for, it’s allowing Rey to despise herself. So she holds on and rocks her and buries her face in the girl’s hair, and soon Rey stops resisting. Wrenching sobs shake her slender frame as she cries and cries, and Leia doesn’t even try to hold her own tears back as she feels Rey’s wetting the collar of her sleep shirt. She has no idea for the life of her how they’re ever going to move past this or if they even can, but she has no intention of letting Rey go the way she did her son.

Slowly, slowly, Rey stops shaking, her breathing growing more and more even until at last she lies limp and spent in Leia’s arms. Leia sucks in a deep, ragged breath, her trembling fingers stroking through Rey’s hair. “I could never hate you,” she whispers, almost distraught at the notion. “I could never hate you, Rey….”  
  
“I killed him…..I killed him….” Rey burrows closer. “I’m so fucking sorry, Leia, I killed him!”  
  
“You didn’t have a choice.” As much as it hurts, as much as she wants to blame Rey, Leia knows beyond all shadow of a doubt that Rey would never, ever have killed unless she had no choice. She can see the girl’s silhouette through the Force; grief, guilt and anger cloud the burning bright light, but these shadows aren’t as deep or as dark as Ben’s had been. As Vader’s had been. “You didn’t have a choice, Rey.”  
  
“I should have let—” Rey is cut off as Leia squeezes her even tighter.

“Don’t,” the general all but begs, her voice shaking violently. “Don’t you ever say that.” Ben was her son, and she had loved him more than her own life. But Leia was no fool; the light he had inside him could never be stronger than the darkness. Perhaps she’d known that all along. If Leia was to truly be honest with herself, she’d lost her little boy years ago. The thought of losing Rey now….“It would kill me.”

Rey is already clinging to Leia forcefully enough that breathing is difficult, but now she tightens her grip to the point where it’s painful. Leia couldn’t care less; she would hold Rey closer if the girl weren’t already in danger of being squished. “I love you,” Leia whispers, and Rey whimpers in response.  
  
“I love you too.”  
  
They’re not ready to put it behind them just yet. Perhaps they never will be. But Leia closes her eyes and feels the strength of Rey’s words, feels the truth of them in the Force, and she knows beyond all shadow of a doubt that nothing will take her family from her now.


End file.
